Sunday, September 30, 2012

All fairly
well on the knitting front.

I spread
the jacket out yesterday morning – a time of day when the synapses are firing,
as far as they ever do. The problem was, too few stitches. If I had gone for
the overlap, there would have been a few more. The part I was knitting had to
be grafted, ridge by ridge, to the garter stitch above – that determined the
ultimate number of stitches which had to be there.

In the end,
the only thing to do was to cut back a bit on the underarm decreases. That was (and remains) worrying,
tightness of upper sleeve being distinctly undesirable. But otherwise it went well. Grafting st st to
the edge of garter stitch going at right angles to the direction of knitting,
proves to be a doddle. Slip a needle through the edge of the garter stitch,
bump by bump, and graft as if you had st st on both needles. I am pleased with
the result.

One day soon I must master the technique of drawing a circle around the part of the picture to which I want to draw attention.

I’m now
finishing off the back – I may or may not get it done today. In that case,
there will be 84 stitches to graft. I’m not complaining – I love grafting. But
it’s slow work. Here's where we are so far:

(Never mind the colour -- consider the overall effect.) Next come the
sleeves, which again involve instructions I don’t understand. Pick up stitches,
make a cap at the top with short rows and wrapping. (I don’t mind short rows,
but I don’t like wrapping.) Knit the sleeve down – something about knitting 2
tog every so often which I don’t entirely grasp. Finish with a garter st
border.

Solvitur
ambulando.

(In looking
up that phrase to make sure I was using it appropriately, I found
this, which brought tears to the old eyes.)

My scam

(If you're starting here, you need to read my blog entries for the last two days.) I emailed the bank yesterday. I got back a prompt, automated response which assumed I was
reporting an email. It included a number to phone if I felt I had compromised my security. But that
wasn’t the case – worrier that I am, I still can’t imagine that I have done
myself any harm by pressing 9. So I didn't phone.

The message
also said that my email would be read (eventually) and investigated. I’ll leave
it there. An interesting experience.

I can’t
find, this morning, the message or comment from one of you about the Money Box
Live BBC programme on automated calls from banks. I went to the BBC website in
search of it. I meant to listen, but I found a long written account – a quicker
way to assimilate information.

The scams
they talked about all involved the telephone-ee being asked to provide security
details. The truly fiendish cleverness of mine was that it didn’t ask me for
anything (except to press 9). And then provided a telephone number I could ring
if I was worried.

3 comments:

The method of making a sleeve cap is just making the shape of a set-in sleeve top from the other direction. Instead of casting off so many stitches each row, you are taking on more stitches each row, thus producing the same shape. I have noticed that, in some of the pre-war "Woolcraft" booklets, the sleeves are of the set-in variety, but are knitted top down. I was reading the instructions and it took me quite a while to figure out just what they were instructing. I suppose that it was a way to make it easier to either lengthen the sleeve, or repair the cuff, rather as in a guernsey. Useful, in children's garments.

If you still have the telephone number you were given in the automated scam call, you can do an internet search for it. That will often pin down the owner of the number, and sometimes it will indicate that other people have received the same scam call.

Do you have a copy of "Knitting in the Old Way" by Gibson-Roberts or (I believe it's also in here) "Knitting from the Top Down" by Barbara Walker? I know the first (and memory says the second as well, but memory's a fickle thing these days) describes the top down short-row set in sleeve.

If you don't pick up the wraps, you'll just get a line of decorative wraps showing ... Though: are the sleeves also in garter? If they are, I think you can blithely sail past, not picking up a wrap at all, AND not having them show.